Add Phishing Scams to the Glories of MySpace

And now there’s a new worry: a “phishing” scam that experts say could compromise teens’ — or their parents’ — financial information.

As with other phishing scams, in which con artists create realistic-looking Web sites using the names of well-known banks or other corporations, the MySpace scam tricks people into going to a copycat page and signing on. Once the user gets on the site, their computer can be infected with software that can later capture keystrokes typed while visiting legitimate banking or shopping sites, said Hiep Dang, director of threat research for Aluria Software, a division of EarthLink and a member of the Digital Knights fraud prevention group.

Other scams involve MySpace profiles that are completely fake and lead to links that can infect your computer, Dang said.